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Home , Hiragana, Japanese dictionary, Kana, Kanji, Katakana, Mi (kana)

Japanese Character Culture

Mi-Young Oh

Professor of Department of Japanese Studies and Linguistics, Soongsil University, Korea

1. Introduction

2. Japanese Characters

1) Introduction, Acceptance, and Transformation of

2) Emergence and Transformation of

3. Japanese Culture of Characters – Characters, Amusement, Arts

4. Conclusion

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1. Introduction

Japan is an island nation which consists of many islands, such as Hokkaiido, , , Kyushu, Okinawa, and on. Japanese means the that is used in neighbor country of Korea, and most of people using Japanese are the who live in Japan. The area of Japan is about 3.8 times larger than South Korea, and the population is over 120 million, which is about 2.5 times more than South Korea. Because Japanese is widely used, there are various dialects depending on locations. However, the language used in , the capital city which is the center of politics, culture, and economics, serves as common language.

These days, Japanese people usually use Kanji and Kana write Japanese, as well as Latin and . Picture 1. is a part of a , and Picture 2. is a Kana category from a famous Japanese , Kojien. With these pictures, can see the actual Japanese , using both Kanji and Kana.

This article aims to examine Japanese characters and Japanese culture with characters. For Japanese characters, this paper will first examine Kanji and Kana, and explore the introduction, acceptance, and transformation of Kanji, and then, also examine the emergence and the transformation of and . Especially for Kana, need to address Manyogana and Sogana before examining Kana. For Japanese culture of characters, I examine Tawamuregaki, a play on characters, Mojie, a combination of characters and images, and Edomoji, .

Picture 1. Japanese writing style in a newspaper

Picture 2. Japanese writing style in a

2. Japanese Characters

1) Introduction, Acceptance, and Transformation of Kanji

Kanji, originally Chinese character, was introduced to Japan between the late 3rd century and the 4th century by people from the Korea peninsula. It was mentioned in Nihonshoki, The Chronicles of Japan (completed on 720), that Dr. Wang and Dr. Ahjikgi from Baekje propagated the Analects of Confucius and the Thousand-Character Classic to Japan, and taught Japanese princes. It is not sure whether all these cases are true, but the one is true that people who came over to Japan from the Korean peninsula introduced characters and cultures to Japan.

At the moment when Kanji was first introduced in Japan, Kanji was regarded as foreign characters to write Chinese, so Japanese people might read Kanji with Chinese pronunciation. After that, their desires to understand Chinese would be steadily increased, and there might be some attempts to translate Chinese to read. At the beginning, people tried to understand Chinese by using marks, or using flags at paragraphs. As this process advanced, people started to change Chinese orders into Japanese ones, and Chinese to Japanese ones. So, there occurred one methodology which was similar to the translation. It is called Kunyomi, which means read its meaning. Japanese people used and some characters to read Chinese with Kunyomi, and those are called Kunten.

When using Kunyomi, Chinese words were usually converted to Japanese, but sometimes people read Chinese words with Japanese character sounds of them. In other words, people use Kunyomi to follow the original meaning of the word, but sometimes people just Unyomi. Here, we can find a big difference in attitudes between Korea and Japan when they accepted . In Korea, the only thing that appears when people use language is the sound of Chinese characters, and one reads a certain Chinese character with Kun, its meaning. For example, when there is a Chinese word ‘天 地’, Korean people read it as cheon-ji depending on the sound of the word, and never read it as ‘sky ground’, with its meaning. That is, people pronounce ‘天地’ as cheon-ji, and unconsciously understand its meaning, ‘sky and ground’. However, in Japan, people read ‘天地’ as tenchi, with Unyomi, or as ametsuchi, with Kunyomi.

Furthermore, one Chinese character would have one or two sounds at most in Korea, but in Japanese, one Chinese character would have many sounds. This is because Chinese sounds had been introduced over a long time with many different routes. Sounds that were used at the era of Chinese Oh, Han, and Dang are all used in Japanese. For example, Japanese people read ‘行’ as gyou following the sound of Chinese Oh, kou following the sound of Chinese Han, and an following the sound of Chinese Dang.

Like Korea, learning Chinese books was the basis of every study in Japan until the early modern age. It was minority who pursued studies, acquired the language, or read books. However, after a modern education in Japan began, there was an idea constantly that learning Kanji would be the burden for Japanese people, and it was almost impossible for all Japanese people to learn Kanji because of its large quantity, so they needed to limit the number of Kanji.

For this reason, there was a movement to limit Kanji using Kanji table. As a result, Jyouyou Kanji Hyou, the table of commonly used Kanji, was established by temporal investigation committee for the national language. This table included 1960 characters, and it was planned to be reflected in . However, because of the Great Kanto Earthquake, that table was not used, and it was revised on 1931.

The second Kanji table was Hyojyun Kanji Taable, designated by temporal investigation committee for the national language. 2,528 characters were included, and there were 1,134 characters from the common Kanji, 1,320 from the semi-common Kanji, and 74 from the special Kanji. However, because World War II happened, this table also was not adapted.

According to this stream of times, the government notified Dayou Kanji Hyou, the table of Kanji that were used at that time. This table included 1850 characters, and it was used in the limited fields, such as laws, public documents, newspapers, and magazines. That time was the era of the limitation of Kanji, the time limited the number of Kanji up to 1,850. Furthermore, the limitation was applied to not only the number of characters, but also the and sound-based pronunciations. The Japanese administration notified Douyou Kanji Onkun Table, the table of the sound-based pronunciation of Kanji used at that time, in 1948, and Douyou Kanji Jitai Hyou, the table of the fonts of Kanji used at that time, in 1949. The simplified Kanji designated by Douyou Kanji Jitai Hyou is called Shinjitai, the new-type fonts, which is the basis of the Japanese Kanji fonts.

In 1981, the policies to limit the number of Kanji were withdrawn, and Dayou Kanji Hyou was rejected. Instead, Jyouyou Kanji Hyou, the table of commonly used Kanji, was notified by the administration. Originally the Kanji table was used to limit the Kanji, but that use was changed to making the criteria when Japanese people use Kanji in their real lives. Jyouyou Kanji Hyou added 95 characters to Dayou Kanji Hyou, so there were 1945 characters. This table not only represented usage of characters but also showed the category of the sounds and meaning of characters, so it became a comprehensive Kanji table. In 2010, the revised version of the table of commonly used Kanji was notified by the Japanese administration to reflect the information era. 196 characters were added and 5 characters were removed, so the total number of the commonly used Kanji became 2,136, and some Unyomis and Kunyomis were removed. For additional characters, the fonts from Koukijiten, the word dictionary on the qing dynasty, was used instead of the new-type fonts. The reason was because the standard of characters' form used in press, printing, or computer related fields were fully considered. So, there are some characters that have different forms between the original common Kanji and added Kanji even though their components are same.

Kanji is originally from , but there are some characters that are originated in Japan. There are differences between China and Japan. Their environments are different, cultures are different, and life-styles are different. Due to these differences, with thoughtful consideration, there occurred some characters that are not used in China, but are needed in Japan. Those characters are called Kokuji, the national character. For example, there are lots of characters that use 魚 'fish', as their radicals. This is because J apan is the island country, so they can easily encounter or eat fishes.

Like this, after Kanji was introduced to Japan, it has served as the way to writing Jap anese, and it has been used up to now. This phenomenon is very different from other c ountries that Chinese characters were introduced to. In Vietnam, after the colonial era, they have not used Chinese characters. In case of Korea, Chinese characters form the b ackground of Korean, but Korean has its distinctive way to describe it, so the effect of Chinese characters doesn't come to the surface easily. However, in Japan, the Japanese people cannot use, especially write Japanese properly without using Kanji. In Japanese, there are fewer , so there are lots of homonyms. Homonyms in Japanese usual ly occur due to Kanji, so it would be hard for people to distinguish the meaning of the word just by using only Kana. Furthermore, because there are no spaces between word s in Japanese, it is difficult to understand the meaning of Japanese without Kanji. Like this, Kana and Kanji are in the complementary relationship in Japanese.

2) The emergence and transformation of Kana

Kana, used to write contemporary Japanese, are made of applying Kanji. Hiragana an d Katakana, the typical characters in Japan, was made by going through Manyogana a nd Sogana.

① Manyogana and Sogana

We need to figure out Manyogana first to examine emergence and transformation of Kana. Because there was no original of Japan, the Japanese people used Kanji to write Japanese, and it was Manyogana. In other words, they used Kanji only with its Unyomi and Kunyomi without its actual meaning. This method is very similar to Ido, used in Korea. We can find the oldest example of Manyogana with pronouns that were used in epigraphs, like 稲荷山古墳鉄剣銘 (471 or 531). We can find many examples of Manyogana from epigraphs between the 6th century and the 7th century, and all examples are pronouns. After the 8th century, the application was widened to common words, so some , such as 正倉院仮名文書, was written only with Manyogana. It shows that Manyogana was commonly used in Japanese.

We can divide Manyogana into a phonetic value and meaning value. The phonetic value used the sound of Kanji, such as 波奈(ハナ), 和禮(ワレ),夜麻登(ヤマト). One character was mapped to one or two syllables. The meaning value was used because when the meaning value of one Kanji was fixed, there would be fewer errors. Usually one character was mapped to one . However, sometimes two syllables were assigned to one character, or one syllable was assigned to two characters.

There could be a possibility that many characters were used to write one syllable in Japanese. However, Japanese used Manyogana on practical sentences like 正倉院仮 名文書, so the usage of Manyogana was normalized. In the late era, Manyogana was used in Waka, Japanese traditional poems, Shosoko, mails, and so on. Manyogana with a curved-style used in 美濃国戸籍帳 (702), and Sogana with a curved-style font used in 讃岐国戸籍帳端書(有年甲文) (867) in the 9th century. People simplified Sogana, so Hiragana occurred. On the other hand, the Japanese people used the meaning values to read Kanji with Japanese in the 9th century. So, people marked Kunten above writings that contained Kanji, and people write Manyogana between lines to describe the meaning value and the phonetic value. However, the Japanese people felt inconvenience when using Manyogana. Manyogana characters had many strokes, so they were not suitable with tiny spaces between lines, and it took a long time to write Manyogana. To solve these problems, the Japanese people invented diacritics called Okototen, ヲコト点, and they also invented Katakana which omitted some stokes of Kanji. They also made Hiragana, which was a simplified form of Sogana.

Picture 3. Manyogana → Sogana → Hiragana

② Hiragana (平仮名)

Hiragana was used when in Japanese private fields of writings, such as Waka and Shosoko. The Japanese people called Kanji and Manyogana as Otokode(男手), but Hiragana as Onnade(女手). It shows that Hiraga served as characters for females.

There is a view that Monk Gukai (空海 774-835) made Hiragana, but it makes sense that many people cooperated to make Hiragana. Existing samples written in Hiragana were made after the 9th century, so we can assume that Hiragana was born in about the 9th century.

In contemporary Hiragana, one character is mapped to one sound. It was confirmed by 小学校令施行規則 revised in 1900. Before that, many characters were usually mapped to one sound. Hentaikana(変体仮名) means the characters other than Hiragana used recently. The late Heian(平安) era, many kinds of Hentaikana was used in many . After the middle age, the Japanese people organized Kana itself, so in modern times, the number of Hentaikana decreased along with the spread of the printing culture, and the supply of education.

③ Katakana (片仮名)

We can find the use of Katakana from the writings in the early 9th century. We can explore the oldest example from Kunten written on 成實論, the Buddhist scripture, and this Kunten was written in 828. Monks from Nara used Kunten in the early Heian era. Their methods to omit Manyogana were different, and many variant letters were used in one syllable. There was a view that Kibino Makibi (吉備眞備) invented Katakana after 倭片假字反切義解1) was written, but it lacked evidences. It would be better to say monks who used Kunten invented Katakana, and many people

1 Written by 耕雲明魏 (1336-1429) standardized it.

In the 10th century, Kana for Kunten was more simplified, and both Hiragana and Katakana were used. Furthermore, Waka written in Katakana was written, and it showed that Kanakana became a character, and it was not a kind of Kunten anymore. In the 11th, people wrote Katakawa with straight strokes. In the 12th century, people used Katakana not only for writing Kunten but also for writing common sentences by monks. And in the Kamakura era, Katakana settled down in Japan, so there were many works, such as fork tales and names for military stuffs, written in Katakana. The variant characters of Katakana were nearly disappeared in the Edo era, so it looked similar to current characters, and the current characters were fixed by the revised version of 小学校令施行規則, previously notified in 1900.

After 1945, Hiragana usually used to write on Japanese, so the use of Katakana decreased. Recently, Katakana has been used to describe loanwords, , mimetic words, idiophones, or exclamation because of its phonetic characteristics.

As mentioned before, Hiragana and Katakawa, which were made to write Manyogana easier and faster, are both used up to now. This is possible because the roles of them are totally divided with their purpose. Hiragana has been used in arts, such as and literatures, because of its elegant font style. However, Katakana was used to describe the meaning value because Katakana has less strokes and strict lines, so people can easily read it and easily write it within tiny spaces.

< Transformation of the font of Katakana >

3. Japanese Culture of Characters – Characters, Amusement, Arts

Within the world of Japanese cultures of characters, we can find how the Japanese people enjoyed their lives. We can explore their enjoyment by looking into their playings with characters, and one of them is Tawamurekaki (戯書) a kind of the meaning value in Manyogana. We can find through Mojie (文字絵) that how the combination of characters and images became the arts and how the Japanese people enjoyed it. Finally, there is Edomoji (江 戸文字) which made the fonts of characters the arts.

1) Tawamurekaki

We already explored Manyogana, which is the origin of Hiragana and Katakana. In Manyogana, one character was sometimes mapped to one sounds, and sometimes mapped to more than two sounds. Also, many characters could be mapped to one certain sound at the same time. There is a book named 万葉集2 that contains the songs written in Manyogana. We can find examples of Tawamurekaki, the representation of the Japanese enjoyment of playing with characters, in this book. Tawamurekaki is the practical use of the form of Kanji, and applied it to reality technically and amusingly. There are many examples of Tawanurekaki that using numbers, animals, or showing brilliant ideas.

For the example of using numbers, there are examples as following; 二二, 重二, 幷二: し, 二五: とを(とお in contemporary Japanese), 十六: しし, 八十一: くく. All of these examples are the application of the multiplication table. There are two 2s in 二二, 重二, 幷二, so results are 4 (2 X 2). In other words, people wrote 二二, 重二, 幷二 in Kanji, and read it as 4 , し in Japanese. In case of 二五, two multiplies five equals ten, so people read it as とを(とお), following the original Japanese word of 10. 十六 and 八十一 shows reversed cases. To make 16, we need to multiply four and four, so people read 十六 as しし. In addition, to make 81, we need to

2 Published in late 8th century multiply nine and nine, so people read 八十一 as くく.

There are examples of using the sounds of animals, such as 牛鳴: む and 蜂音: ぶ. At that time, the sound of the cow was む, and the sound of the bee was ぶ. The Japanese people applied those sounds, and made these methods.

The other examples related with animals are as following; 追馬: そ, 喚犬: ま. 追馬 means ‘seek horses’, and we assume that people produced そ sound to do that. Also, 喚犬 means ‘call dogs’ and we assume that people produced ま sound to do that. According to these, people write 追馬 and 喚犬, and pronounce them as そ and ま.

The following is a more complex example.

虚蝉乃 世人有者 大王之 御命恐弥 礒城嶋能 日本国乃石上

振里尓 紐不解 丸寐乎為者 吾衣有 服者奈礼奴 毎見 恋者雖益

色二山上復有山者 一可知美 冬夜之 明毛不得呼 五十母不宿二

吾歯曽恋流 妹之直香仁 <万葉集九・1787>

The 山上復有山 in this song could be translated into 出 because there is a 山 over a 山. So, it is pronounced as いづ, following the original word of it in Japanese. 色二山上復 有山者 is pronounced as 色に出(い)でば, and it means one’s inward thoughts, especially related with , come out to the surface by ones face or motions. At the time when that song was made, there was a same poem ‘藁砧今何在 山上復有山 何当大刀頭 破鏡飛 上天’, in 玉台新詠 which was introduced from China. The example song above might imitate the expression 山上復有山 and applied it to Manyoshu.

There are more examples that are interesting; 向南: きた, 青頭鶏: かも. The first example means that the south looks at the north, so pronounce it as きた, the north. In the actual song, there is 向南山, and people produced it as きたやま, the mountain located in the north. The second example, 青頭鶏, is used as 恋渡青頭鶏 in the actual song. It means that ‘the bird like a chicken whose head is blue’ is ‘a duck(鴨)’, so people read it as かも, following the original Japanese word. In this case, it is not used as a , and just used as a suffix to express one’s impression.

There are lot more cases that the playing of Japanese is reflected with combining characters and sounds. With these expressions, we can see the wit and relaxation of the ancient Japanese people.

2) Mojie (文字絵)

There is a typical Japanese character playing, へのへのもへじ. As you can see in Picture 4, people arrange seven Hiragana characters, and make it to be seen as a face of human being. へのへのもへの, へめへめしこじ, and へねへねしこし are also examples of this kind of combinations.

Picture 4. へのへのもへじ

Like this, Mojie means the image that is the combination of characters to express the figure, or the addition of characters in the picture. It has been done since the Heian era, and each Mojie from each era shows its distinctive features.

People assume that the beginning of Mojie was Ashidee (葦手絵). As mentioned before, since the 9th century, Kanji, Katakana, and Hiragana were used in Japan. Originally the noble class people used Hiragana. They used to recite and exchange Waka. One of their main interests was how to make their Waka more attractive. Due to their interests, there occurred many different and special ways to write Hiragana, such as Wakachigaki (分かち 書き: Divide Waka into several clauses and write them), Jirashigaki (散らし書き: Write Waka on a paper here and there) and Renmentai (連綿体: Write down some Kana continuously).

Picture 5. One example of Jirashigaki

By scattering clauses with different lengths like Jirashigaki, it caused a kind of a picturesque character, and the whole paper looks like a one canvas as a result. In addition, writer conveyed his/her sense of beauty by adjusting the concentration of the ink, colors, the width, the margin, or the connection of characters. This Jirashigaki occurred in the middle of 10th century, and had been developed over many years, and held the important position in the field of calligraphy. Those expressions, like Jirashigaki, became a motivation to invent Ashidee, drawing pictures with characters.

Ashidee is a method that transforms characters in a pictorial way, writes those characters on the picture of reeds, waterfowls, or rocks secretly, and make characters the part of the picture. With this, we can examine the taste for the arts of the nobles along with characters and pictures. This is called Ashidee(葦手), or Ashidekaki(葦手書).

Picture 6. Example of Ashidee

The characters used in Ashidee could be regarded as the decoration characters, which mean that Kana to write Waka developed and became one unique font. The name Ashidee was named after the figure of characters, which was similar to the leaf of the reed. We can find a reference of Ashidee from books such as 宇津保物語 and 源氏物語. According to the 蔵開(中) chapter from 宇津保物語, there was a book 大の草紙, and Waka was written in 女の手, さうくだり(草書), かたかんな(カタカナ), and あしで in that book. In addition, according to the 国譲(上) chapter, the main character 仲忠 wrote books for 若宮, and in one book, Waka was written in four kinds of fonts, をとこで(楷書), 女で(変体仮名), かたかな, and あしで. When we look at the 梅枝 chapter from the book 源氏物語, there is a scene that Kanji chose things that his daughter would keep when she enter the palace. There were books that were chosen depending on their contents, inks and brushes. Among those books, the book Ashidee Soshi, which was made by many young writers, was included. In that book, there were images of the reed and the stream of water, and it was described that lots of characters were written here and there in those images.

Ashidee was originally used to describe Waka, but it was used on clothes or daily necessaries as time went by and decorative purposes were strengthened. In the meantime, sometimes the characters without any relations with images were written. Ashide was used not only to draw common pictures, but also to draw the picture of the title page of Buddhist scriptures when it was published to make an offering to Buddha.

Ashidee had been decreased, and (俳句) or Ukiyoye(浮世絵), which represent the Edo era, were developed with social and economic stability. Mojie whose purpose was just an enjoyment also became a trend.

Picture 7 is a typical example of Mojie in the Edo era. The first one is the picture of a green grocer(あをものうり:青物売り), the second one is of a person in a chinashop(せともの うり:瀬戸物売り), and the third one is of a person who sells Manjoo(まんぢう屋:饅頭屋). In all examples, all the characters become a part of pictures.

Picture 7. Mojie in the Edo era

Along with the trend of Mojie, many famous painters of Ukiyoe(浮世絵) like Katsushika Hokusai(葛飾北斎) also drew Mojie. Furthermore, in the Edo era, there was high-level education through institutes such as (寺子屋), similar to Seodang in Joseon, for ordinary people and even for children, and Mojie was used as a text book. There is a play called Hanjimono(判じ物), which is related with Mojie. It is a kind of a puzzle, and a representative example of Hanjimono is 無筆名所案内図, which shows the information about famous places of the Edo. As we can see in Picture 8, meanings are concealed with characters and images, and the goal is to find all meanings. This is very similar to a picture puzzle. There are answers at the lower left part, so people can find famous places in Edo joyfully. These kinds of pictures were released a lot in the Edo era.

Picture 8. Hanjimono in the Edo era

3) Edomoji (江戸文字)

There is Edomoji (江戸文字) which is the way to make characters the arts. Edomoji is a general term to refer to designed characters used in the Edo era. Each font has its unique name, and was used only for its own purposes.

Picture 9. Edomoji The left part of the first line is called Shibaimoji(芝居文字), and it is used for making signs of theatres, or to write program names of Kabuki. The right part of the first line is called Yosemoji(寄席文字), and it is used to write signs of the theatre, orders, or invitations of (落語). The left part of the second line is Kagomoji(籠文字), and the right part is Higemoji(髭文字), and the left part of the third line is Chyouchinmoji(提 灯文字). The right part of the third line is Sumouji(相撲字), and it is used to write the order of or used for the advertisement of Sumo. The last one is called Kakuji(角字), and it is used for seals.

Among those Edomoji, Sumouji is still used in Banzuke(番付), which shows the ranking of Sumo players, and other Edomoji are also used continuously in various field depending on their original purposes. With these cases, we can assure the attitude of the Japanese people, which is creating their own culture and continuously inheriting it.

Picture 10. Sumoumoji: Sumo Banzuke (the ranking of Sumo players)

4. Conclusion

5. Reference

沖森卓也編(1989) The history of Japanese, おうふう 45-55.

沖森卓也・笹原宏之・常磐智子・山本真吾(2011) The explanatory diagrams of Japanese characters, 三省堂 62- 83.

高島俊男(2003) Kanji and the Japanese people (文春新書198), 文藝春秋 169-239. 高田智和(2014) The history and prospect of Japanese common Kanji, & Culture Association of Korea, 2014 Fall International Conference 25-26.

築島裕(1975) Ancient scripts 『音韻史・文字史(講座国語史2)』, 大修館書店 311-444.

月本雅幸(2005) to 『文字・書記(朝倉日本語講座)』, 朝倉書店 76-95.

Yoon, Sangsil・Kwon, Seongrim・Oh, Miyeong(2012) Introduction to Japanese Linguistics, J&C 71- 108.